Valve, the New Major System, and the Problem of Multi-Team Ownership

The end of The International 7 marked the end of the Major tournament system that we’ve been familiar with. The next season of Dota 2 competition will be very different from any season before. Valve has announced that the next Dota 2 season will feature 22 tournaments all over the world and those tournaments will feature Circuit Points. Besides that, Valve has announced that these Circuit Points will be a crucial aspect when it comes to qualifying for The International 8.

Valve has dealt with many issues when it comes to the new format of the tournaments in Dota 2 competitions and almost all of them have been resolved in a very satisfying way. However, there is one issue that Valve has not paid much attention to and that could potentially pose a huge problem for Valve and for Dota 2 competitions in general.

The Problem of Multi-Team Ownership

The last year in eSports was characterized by controversies surrounding one organization or one owner having two or more teams in the same competitions. Many other eSports competitions have solved this problem by prohibiting one owner of having two teams in the same tournament but Valve has refused to tackle this problem for a long period of time.

Even now, it seems that Valve will not be introducing any new rules for this issue which might prove to be very problematic for the competition. This is because in order to get a direct invite for The International 8, teams would have to collect Circuit Points, which leaves the opportunity for two teams owned by the same individual or organization to collect points for each roster.

This problem became obvious the most back at the International 4 when Alliance faced Evil Geniuses in the match that could potentially put Alliance in the playoffs. EG was already in the playoffs and a defeat did not matter a lot. At that time, both of those teams were owned by GoodGame Agency. In that kind of a situation, GoodGame could earn a lot of money and the pressure on EG to lose the game was huge. EG eventually won the game and the issue of multi-team ownership was forgotten for the time being.

Eliminating all Possibilities for Possible Match Fixing

Even though Dota 2 competition has not seen huge match-fixing scandals, the potential for that kind of situation is there while teams owned by the same subject are allowed to compete in the tournament. Because of that, Valve needs to make sure that they do everything they can to avoid that kind of a situation and the ban on this issue would be the perfect solution for that.

The situation with Evil Geniuses and Alliance should have never happened in the first place because Valve needed to solve that problem from the start. The introduction of Circuit Points and the new tournaments system is a perfect opportunity for Valve to handle this problem once and for all. Valve has already solved this problem for their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments and because of that, it does not make any sense that they refuse to handle this problem in Dota 2 competitions as well.